


Hush hush

by Naomida



Series: Howl at the Moon [2]
Category: Fantastic Four, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen, M/M, Mating, Pack Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:25:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6336088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naomida/pseuds/Naomida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that Johnny is back and happily mated, Sue has to take care of her other problems: a half feral wolf in her basement and Johnny meddling in her business like he has nothing better to do.</p><p>Seriouly, thank every god for Jim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hush hush

Johnny might have finally been mated to Peter, he was still a little shit and one of the biggest pain in Sue's ass. Seriously, it was like he did everything for the sole purpose of annoying her and making her life a little bit more difficult – probably because he thought being the Alpha of a pack of moron wasn't difficult enough.

“There is no way I am letting you do this.” she said, for the _third_ time already.

“But Sue!” immediately whined her brother, pouting and grabbing a throw-pillow to hug it against his chest, “This is important for him and I'm _his mate_!”

“And you're also the least subtle and discreet person I know,” she replied, frowning when he pouted even more, “and you have to remember that I know _Victor_ , who used to have a marble statue of himself in the middle of his entry-way.”

“She also knows Namor, who spends most of his time oiling his chest and combing his eyebrows.” added Ben.

He stopped smirking like an idiot when Sue turned her frown to him but continued cackling as Johnny sighed like a diva and whined some more.

“Come on, it's just one little brunch, it can't hurt anyone!” pressed Johnny when he finally realized that his moaning wasn't going to make her change her mind.

“You've been a werewolf for long enough to know that a lot of people can be hurt with just a tiny little brunch. I'm nice enough to let him call them and write them letters, but that's it. He cannot and will not meet up with his aunt and uncle, especially not with you being there.”

Johnny's face turned suddenly serious and hard and, sensing a screaming match coming, Sue got up from the couch and started walking in the direction of the kitchen.

“I need to find a solution for Victor now so please, stop bothering me.” she declared.

“ _Please_.” sighed Johnny, rolling his eyes, “We all know what's the solution to his problem.”

Sue ignored him and walked right out of the room without another glance to her brother.

  


  


***

  


  


It had all started a very long time ago, when a rogue wolf had bitten both Sue and Johnny while they were on a camping trip with their aunt. To this day, Sue still had nightmares about that very first time she had woken up in the middle of the woods, covered in blood and able to hear the ants crawl around her on the ground. The whole 'I'm a werewolf now' thing had freaked her out so much, _Johnny_ had been the one to help her control it.

He was also her first beta, a special position even if she hadn't been the one to bite him, and everything she had done ever since that fateful night when they had woken up transformed, was for him. She had done her best to build the strongest pack she could, a real second family for everyone, find a good job and buy a big house on the outskirts of town to be able to give her wolves some freedom.

All that, for Johnny.

And he was thanking her by doing his best to make her hate her life.

Victor blinked from his spot on the middle of her bed as Johnny continued grinning at her and Peter squirmed, obviously trying to stand as far from Victor as possible.

“What the fuck, Johnny?” she asked, hands on her hips and scowl already on her face.

“Don't worry, Peter smells almost just like me, Victor isn't going to attack him.”

Victor's eyes flashed blue, a clear sign that this was far from certain.

“ _Aaand_ ,” continued Johnny, apparently oblivious to his mate whose eyes flashed too, in fear, “everyone in this house knows exactly what's the problem with him so just bite each other so we can finally get him back. Not that I liked him, he's an obnoxious bastard on his best days, but living with a half feral wolf is really freaking Pete out and Victor used to pay on every pizza night.”

Victor groaned, the sound way more animal than human, and Peter quickly crossed the bedroom to go stand right behind Sue, using her as a shield.

“Johnny, I told you to leave this alone.” said Sue between clenched teeth, feeling her calm slowly starting to slip out.

“No Sue, it's been a month now that I'm back and you still haven't done anything about him.” replied her brother, frowning and taking a step in her direction.

“Leave. This. Alone.” she repeated, her eyes flashing red.

She realized she put power into those words when all three of her wolves flinched and bared their neck.

“Sue...” tried Johnny, voice strangled.

Victor met her eyes, the black circles under his and his pale skin making him look even more pathetic than ever since he had snapped, and Sue took a second to consider his sad expression and his tight, unshaven jaw, before she finally turned around and shifted while walking, transforming into a big white wolf and starting the run straight to the back door and into their yard once she was on four legs instead of two.

Nobody followed her or tried to come get her once the sun had set.

  


  


***

  


  


“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Jim, sitting on the kitchen's island and holding out a cup of coffee as an offering the next morning.

Sue grabbed the cup without a word and drowned half of it in one gulp.

“Johnny's feeling very sorry for what he did.”

“Johnny's an idiot.” she snorted, slamming the cup down next to Jim's thigh and turning to open the fridge and glare at its content. “He doesn't know anything about Victor's situation and thinks he can help by just pushing us around and hoping for the best.”

Jim coughed and Sue abruptly spun on her heels to look at his embarrassed face.

“ _What_?!” she barked.

“I mean...” he started, looking down at the floor and shrugging his large shoulders. “At least he's trying to do something, right?”

Sue slammed the fridge's door hard enough to rattle the whole thing and crossed her arms, squinting down at Jim whose cheeks turned red as he looked down and tried to appear smaller by hunching his shoulders.

“Are you saying that I'm not doing anything to help him?” she asked, voice cold and snapping.

“No, of course not.” he murmured, the anger rolling off of Sue probably enough to choke him up. “I just think that you know how to fix him but for some reason still haven't done so?”

It was like a bucket of ice. Sue took a step back, feeling as if she had just been slapped, and Jim sharply looked up and met her eyes.

“How...” she breathed.

“I overheard the two of you talking, right after he attacked Peter.”

Nodding slowly, Sue looked down at Jim's bare feet resting against the lower cabinet, trying to push the memories of that night as far away as she could.

She remembered clearly telling Victor that the exact same thing he had done was going to happen. She remembered begging him to do as she said, but as usual he had been too proud and hurt to listen. She remembered with perfect clarity the panic that had surged through her when he had left the pack during their monthly hunt, the other wolves howling at the full Moon like crazy because they couldn't understand their Alpha's panic, the animal in them already having overtaken the human part.

There was no way she could forget having to drag Victor's black wolf away from the poor boy's body. At the time she hadn't realized that he was still breathing, that there was a chance that the bite would save him, that Peter was soon to become her newest beta.

She had thought that Victor's wolf had totally lost it and killed an innocent – and she knew that a death penalty was the only way she could react to that. There was no way a good Alpha would let such a liability live. She'd have to put him down, or ask another Alpha to do so, and she _knew_ that she wasn't going to be able to move on if Victor had to die just because she had been too careful about his feelings to give him a very clear and simple order.

By the time she had turned back to her human form, ordered everyone to take care of the victim and forced Victor away from there, he was already back into a human and sobbing loudly, asking her to make it stop.

Unfortunately, they both knew that the only person who could make it better wasn't her – and that was the core of the problem.

She had taken him to the basement, had chained him into the bedroom that was down there and had sat down with him on the floor, the both of them wearing nothing but blankets draped around their shoulders as she had taken him into her arms and hugged him as tight as she could.

“You need to do it.” she had murmured against the crown of his head, feeling him shake like a leaf against her. “It can't go on, your wolf can't take it and soon, he'll finally understand and something even worse than tonight is going to happen.”

Victor hadn't replied.

“You can talk to me Sue.” said Jim, bringing her right out of her memories and back into the kitchen.

He was wearing his worry completely bare on his face and Sue had a little trouble swallowing down the lump lodged in her throat.

“I don't want to order Victor to do anything that he doesn't want to, and this is all my fault.”

“The consequences aren't _that_ bad.” Jim tried to reassure her.

“Yes they are. We just got lucky that Peter survived the attack and, by some miracle, became Johnny's mate. He could have died, and I would have had to kill Victor, and Reed would have tried to kill me, but I'm stronger so we would have lost him too.”

Frowning, Jim slid down the island and crossed the few steps separating them to stand right in front of her and meet her eyes – which she only allowed because she was _this_ tired of the situation.

“Why would Reed react like that to Victor's death?” he asked.

Sue knew that he didn't have to ask, that the reason was pretty clear but, just like Victor and her, he couldn't believe it.

“Does Reed know?” he asked after one tense minute of silence spent just looking at her.

“Not yet. Victor isn't exactly _pleased_ with it and asked me to not say anything.”

“But we all thought...”

“The two of us thought too, but we were wrong.”

Jim's lips thinned into a tight line.

“How long have you guys known?”

“About us? Several years. Victor only found out about Reed eleven months ago.”

“ _Eleven_?! Johnny couldn't even take it for a month and he's done that for _eleven_?”

“Victor's stubborn and he doesn't like it when things don't go according to his plans.”

“That's no excuse Sue, you can't let him live like that. This is destroying him and this is going to destroy Reed in the long run.”

“And you think I don't know that?!” she snapped, anxiously dragging her fingers through her hair. “I've let this mess grow bigger than it should have and now I don't know what to do because _he almost killed someone,_ Jim. His wolf lost it and he's quickly following!”

“You need to sit him down, look into his eyes and tell him to _talk_ to Reed.” replied Jim, grabbing her by the shoulders and bending down to be at eye-level with her. “You can't think about what he wants, not anymore, you need to think about the pack's well-being. You said it, we got lucky with Peter, and I don't think we'll hit jackpot a second time when it's time for Victor to attack someone again. Or worse, for Reed to lose it too.”

Biting down on her lower lip, Sue spent ten long seconds looking right into Jim's eyes, knowing that he was right.

He was the oldest wolf she knew, apart maybe for Namor and Steve – the three of them all knew each other since the thirties and had been in the same pack for a while, not that any of them ever talked about it – and she knew that his advices were always good, but doing what he was saying felt a lot like betraying Victor's trust and she already felt responsible and guilty enough for everything that was happening.

“This is all my fault.” she finally sighed, closing her eyes in a futile attempt to keep the tears welling up in her eyes to herself. “Victor and I tried to mate, several times, but my wolf always refused him and he thought something was _wrong_ with him. He didn't realize his wolf wanted Reed until it was too late because of that… because he thought he was broken.”

Jim wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, and Sue gladly melted into the hug, all of her suffocating guilt-ridden thoughts finally not weighting her down as much as during the past few months.

“Ask Stark to lend you his penthouse again, take the both of them there and force them to talk.” he said, starting to rock them from side to side.

Sue nodded, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist and hiding her face in the crook of his shoulder, thanking once again the universe for making their paths cross.

“It's all going to be okay, I promise.”

“Thank you.” she replied.

  


  


***

  


  


The one thing about this whole affair Sue hadn't seen coming was for Reed to stalk into her bedroom just as she was ready to go to sleep, plant himself at the foot of her bed, cross his arms and frown down at her as much as he could while looking at her right shoulder instead of her eyes.

“Yes?” she asked when he didn't speak.

“I want to know what the hell is going on. No, I _need_ to know.” he declared, frown deepening.

Sighing, Sue arranged her pillows to be able to sit correctly at the head of the bed and patted the space next to her.

“Trust me, it's going to be a _very_ long conversation.” she said when he didn't move.

Their eyes met and Sue gave him a tiny smile, finally prompting him to move.

“You're probably going to get very mad at me once you know everything.” she warned once he was comfortably sitting next to her.

“At you, or at Victor?” he asked, before chuckling at her slightly surprised expression, “Please Sue, everyone's been waiting for you to do something about him since he attacked Peter, and you asked me to come with you for a week-end away just after spending at least two hours with him down in the basement. I'm not stupid.”

“In this case, you're totally going to get very mad at him, and maybe a little at me.”

“But I'll forgive the two of you?”

“Unless Victor really wants to die this time, yeah, you'll forgive us.”

Nodding, Reed smiled encouragingly while she finally started talking.

  


  


***

  


  


Sue was already a werewolf when she had met this pathetically proud and furious at the world hacker-slash-genius scientist named Victor and they had clicked after the second eye-roll from her. It had taken them a little over three years to start dating, mostly because Victor liked to be dense and the whole 'I'm a supernatural creature' reveal hadn't gone the way anyone had hoped – Victor had freaked the hell out for about two seconds before demanding proof of what Sue was telling him and, once he had seen her wolf, had asked her to bite him.

By the time he had joined the pack, Namor and Jim were already there, although Namor was still pretending to not be a part of their ragtag family but still showing up every Sunday for diner, and for a long time, things had been great.

Then Ben had joined the pack, loud, boisterous and bigger and larger than Sue and Johnny together, and Victor had started to ask a lot of questions about Ben's girlfriend, Alicia.

The first time he had asked her to mate him was after a big fight Sue had with Johnny, and the two of them hadn't spoke for a week after their failure. They had broken up after the fourth unsuccessful attempt and pretended that everything was okay for the sake of the pack.

But then, two years prior to everything that was now happening – and hopefully coming to a happy ending – Sue had met Reed and bit him, and Victor had stopped looking at her with quiet desperation.

Now that she was watching the two of them sitting and talking on the giant balcony of Stark's giant penthouse, she was really wondering why the hell it had taken them all so long to finally come to this conclusion.

Victor glared at Reed when he grabbed his left hand and intertwined their fingers but his shoulders visibly relaxed and for the first time in eleven months, he finally started to look like himself again – except for the beard, and she knew Johnny would never let him live this down once everything was back to normal.

Reed smiled softly, Victor looked the other way, and Sue smiled and left the apartment, confident that everything was going to be okay now.

  


  


***

  


  


“ _Wait a fucking minute_.” said Johnny, jumping on his feet and pointing an accusative finger in Sue's direction. “What the hell's that supposed to mean?!”

“What do you want 'Victor and Reed are mated' to mean?” snorted Namor.

He was, as usual, sitting by himself on a chair next to a window, arms crossed and face screwed like he had just bitten a lemon and was pretending that it didn't taste sour.

“Really, I'm surprised you didn't see that one coming.” he continued as Johnny just gaped at him. “Richards has been making starry eyes at Von Doom ever since he joined the pack and, despite his exterior, this is no secret that Von Doom is a softy deep, deep inside.”

Johnny looked like his eyes were going to bulge right out of his head at any moment before he slowly turned back to his sister, visibly astounded.

“Did I fall into a parallel universe during the night? Because there is no fucking way I heard any of this right.”

“Babe.” sighed Peter, trying to grab him by the wrist but Johnny dodged him and took a step in Sue's direction, his finger still pointed at her.

“Your boyfriend has gone batshit crazy because he wanted to shack up with _Reed_? This is what you're telling me and you're expecting me to believe it?”

“He's not my boyfriend.” sighed Sue, rolling her eyes.

Ben, who had stopped cackling when Johnny had started screaming, started right back again, furiously texting at the same time.

“And, to make matter worse, _Namor_ , out of every-fucking-one, is telling me that _he saw that_ _one_ _coming_?!”

Throwing his hands up and closing his eyes, Johnny heaved a sigh like the diva that he was and let himself fall back on the couch, ending half sitting on Peter who rolled his eyes but smiled when Johnny put a hand on his knee.

“You should just be glad that your mate has no reasons to be scared of Victor now that he's slowly coming back to his normal self.” replied Sue.

“You mean his normal _asshole_ self! Cause that's what he is!”

“He's not wrong.” immediately piped up Ben.

Sue glared at him but Jim and Namor both nodded so she decided to abandon this fight for now and just be glad that her pack of stupid morons was almost back to being normal and well again.

“Hey, does that mean now that I can finally have brunch with Peter's family?”

“Hell no!” replied Ben.

“But–”

“Trust us, you don't want to do that.” said Jim, and Sue watched with amusement as the arguments died right on Johnny's tongue as he nodded and shyly looked down at his laps.


End file.
